Checking In With Bitcoin (2)

Hacker steals $250k in Bitcoins from online exchange Bitfloor | Ars Technica

The future of the up-and-coming Bitcoin exchange Bitfloor was thrown into question Tuesday when the company’s founder reported that someone had compromised his servers and made off with about 24,000 Bitcoins, worth almost a quarter-million dollars. The exchange no longer has enough cash to cover all of its deposits, and it has suspended its operations while it considers its options.

This comes on the heels of news of the collapse of what’s been called a giant Bitcoin Ponzi scheme. See Official: Bitcoin Loan Shark ‘pirateat40’ Defaults for details:

A mountain of problems have been growing the past several weeks surrounding the recent drama around massive Bitcoin lender, pirateat40, as reports of fund inaccessibility came out of the wood work.

Purported to have had somewhere around 500,000 BTC in Bitcoin Savings & Trust, his fund that was offering deposit account holders up to 7% weekly interest on their holdings. The lending service provider announced a default on borrowed assets just a short while ago; the estimated value for the defaulted assets is $5,000,000 USD.

Actually, the amazing part is that Bitcoin isn’t totally dead.

Previously: Bitcoin & Gresham’s Law & Botnets (2/22/12); Checking In With Bitcoin (10/25/11) and Why Bitcoin Isn’t As Exciting as it May Sound (6/11/11).

This entry was posted in Cryptography, Econ & Money. Bookmark the permalink.